Gregory Colbert, Ashes and Snow

“Letter 7

In the beginning of time, the skies were filled with flying elephants. Too heavy for their wings, they sometimes crashed through the trees and frightened other animals.

All the flying grey elephants migrated to the source of the Ganges. They agreed to renounce their wings and settle on the earth. When they molted millions of wings fell to the earth, the snow covered them, and the Himalayas were born.

The blue elephants landed in the sea and their wings became fins. They are the whales, the trunkless elephants of the oceans. Their cousins are the manatees, the trunkless elephants of the rivers.

The chameleon elephants kept their wings but agreed never to land on earth. They change colors of their feathers every day. Today they are azure, and when it rains they are the color of pearls.

When they go to sleep, the chameleon elephants always lie down in the same place in the sky and dream with one eye open. The stars you see at night are the unblinking eyes of sleeping elephants, who sleep with one eye open to best keep watch over us.” 

Gregory Colbert

 Ashes and Snow : A Novel in Letters

and

 Ashes and Snow -book 1- Photography Nomadic 

Ashes and Snow by Gregory Colbert from Gregory Colbert on Vimeo.


Gregory Colbert’s Ashes and Snow feature film captures extraordinary moments of contact between people and animals as seen through the lens of the artist’s camera on more than thirty expeditions to some of the earth's most remote places. Written, directed, produced, and filmed by Gregory Colbert, it is a poetic field study that depicts the world not as it is, but as it might be—a world in which the natural and artificial boundaries separating humans from other species do not exist. The viewing experience is one of wonder and contemplation, serenity, and hope.

Edited by two-time Oscar-winner Pietro Scalia; narrated by actors Laurence Fishburne (English), Enrique Roche (Spanish), and Ken Watanabe (Japanese). Musical collaborators include Michael Brook, David Darling, Heiner Goebbels, Lisa Gerrard, Lukas Foss, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and Djivan Gasparyan.